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The following is a preview of a prototype copy of Herbaceous. The artwork, components and rules may not be in their final form.

Overview

In Herbaceous, players take on the role of horticulturists and compete to plant the most herbs. Each player has four different pots that they can plant herbs in. On a player’s turn they will choose two cards, one will go into the community garden, the other into their own private garden. Since you can only plant a group of herbs once per pot, you’ll be pressing your luck as you decide whether to plant what you’ve got or hold out and hope to collect even more herbs (the more herbs you plant in a pot, the more points you get in the end). If you wait too long other players might end up taking the cards you were hoping to take yourself because anyone can use the cards in the community garden.

Who would enjoy this game?

Family Gamer{yes}

There are so many reasons Herbaceous is great for families. The theme is appealing, the artwork is amazing, it’s educational (learning what specific herbs look like), and above all the gameplay is easy to learn and fun for any age.

Social Gamer{yes}

As long as you’ve got a smaller group, while Herbaceous isn’t necessarily a “party game,” it’s definitely a game that you can have fun playing while chatting and socializing with friends and family.

Strategy Gamer{yes}

Strategy gamers will enjoy the fact that cards are played face up which allows you to anticipate other players’ future actions and strategize over what cards to play. There’s also the exhilaration of deciding whether to pot your plants or press your luck and wait another turn, hoping the drafting pool gets even better.

Casual Gamer{yes}

Casual Gamers will love how easy Herbaceous is to learn while also discovering the depth of strategy and how much more fun the game is round after round.

Avid Gamer{yes}

Herbaceous is one of those games that you can teach to any crowd and plays quickly enough that you’ll commonly hear “let’s play another round!” Next thing you know you’ve been playing the game all evening and having a blast.

Power Gamer{maybe}

A Power Gamer might describe Herbaceous a “filler” game. That’s definitely not a bad thing, as Herbaceous is very easy to teach, fun and quick to play, and portable enough to easily bring along with you to game nights at the game store or larger events and tournaments to play in between your larger games.

Final Thoughts

The art in Herbaceous by Beth Sobel is stunning and fits the theme of the game so well. Just take a look at this image below showing a few of the herb cards in the game.

Both the theme and the mechanics make this a great game for almost any group of gamers, from your most casual to your most avid. No matter who we played Herbaceous with, after each game we always would hear players say “let’s play another round!”

We really enjoyed Herbaceous, and highly recommend you check out the kickstarter campaign to learn more about the game.